CREDIT: Dark Horse
Rating: 4/5 – Hard Sci-Fi on an Alien Planet.
by ComicSpectrum EiC Bob Bretall.
If you like hard sci-fi, this is a series you should be checking out. I wasn’t originally planning to review this issue, but when I read it I needed to get some thoughts down and share them with the ComicSpectrum readers. I’ve liked science fiction, both prose novels and in comics, since I was a kid. It’s fairly uncommon to get a good hard sci-fi premise to come across in a comic that will grab me in the first issue like this one did.
The story is by Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson, with a script by comics veterans Gabriel Hardman & Corinna Bechko. The basic story centers around the planet Poseidon, circling a red dwarf star and with a gravity significantly higher than Earth’s but survivable by humans as long as they don’t stay too long (3 years on planet is the maximum recommended stay). We pick up the action as a ship arrives bringing in a new rotation of personnel as well as picking up cargo for transportation back to Earth, We have several story threads running here; a personal/emotional tale involving one of the crew on the ship and his ex-girlfriend who has been on Poseidon for the past 3 years; a thread involving the discovery of the strange differences in life on Poseidon; and the shocking occurrence on the last page of the issue that is no doubt the main driving force for the remainder of the action in the series.
Artist Fernando Baldo does a good job depicting both the scientific/technical up on the spacecraft as well as designing the strange alien flora/fauna of Poseidon. He’s a little sparse on background details on a few of the pages but makes up for it with the body language and facial expressions that really enhanced to storytelling for me.
If you like a little more science in your science fiction, give Deep Gravity a try. The characters and situations help to ground the story and make it feel like “Yes, this could happen somewhere out in the future”. The story, script, and art all worked together to make this a first issue I thoroughly enjoyed and I can’t wait to see where the story gores after the event on the last page of #1.
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall
(bob@comicspectrum.com)
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